iCloud Drive taking up space on your Mac? Free it safely

Why iCloud Drive uses space on your Mac

iCloud Drive isn't only online. Files you open, create or save there are kept on your Mac as well, so they work without a connection. How much stays depends on a few things:

• Optimize Mac Storage is off. Then, in Apple's words, the full contents of iCloud Drive remain on your Mac (Apple, Store files in iCloud Drive on Mac).
• Desktop & Documents Folders is on. Your Desktop and Documents then live in iCloud Drive, so everything in them counts as iCloud Drive storage on this Mac.
• Files marked Keep Downloaded. These stay on the Mac no matter what, by design.
• An iCloud Drive (Archive) folder. If you once turned off iCloud Drive or signed out and chose to keep a local copy, macOS copied your files into a folder with that name in your home folder (Apple, Turn off Desktop & Documents Folders on your Mac). It's a separate copy, and easy to forget.

To see how much it adds up to, open System Settings › General › Storage and look at the iCloud Drive category, or click its ⓘ button for the files themselves. What each storage category means.

Remove Download, delete, or move out

These look similar in Finder and do very different things. Apple describes each in Work with folders and files in iCloud Drive on Mac.

When the goal is space on this Mac, Remove Download is almost always the one you want.

Turn on Optimize Mac Storage

This lets macOS make the choice for you. The steps are the same on macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27:

1. Choose Apple menu › System Settings and click your name at the top of the sidebar.
2. Click iCloud, then Drive.
3. Turn on Optimize Mac Storage, then click Done.

With it on, older documents are stored only in iCloud when space is needed. The important words are "when space is needed": if your disk has room, macOS may leave everything downloaded, so turning it on doesn't always free space straight away. The Store in iCloud recommendation in Storage settings goes further: it also moves Desktop and Documents into iCloud Drive and can store photos and messages in iCloud, keeping only recently opened files on the Mac when space is needed (Apple, Optimize storage space). Check what's included before you click it.

Remove downloads yourself

1. In Finder, click iCloud Drive in the sidebar. Switch to list view and sort by Size to find the big items.
2. Control-click a file or folder and choose Remove Download. The local copy goes, and the item stays in the list with an In iCloud status icon.
3. To bring one back for offline use, Control-click it and choose Download Now.

Files that haven't been uploaded yet stay on your Mac until they are; Apple notes that when your iCloud storage is full, a file that can't be saved to iCloud Drive stays on the Mac until there's room. To stop a folder you work in from being removed later, Control-click it and choose Keep Downloaded; choose it again to turn that off.

Desktop and Documents in iCloud

If Desktop & Documents Folders is on, removing downloads works in those folders too. Turning the feature off doesn't bring files back to your Mac: Apple says the files stay in iCloud Drive, and new, empty Desktop and Documents folders are created in your home folder. To move files back, drag them from iCloud Drive to where you want them, and make sure the Mac has room for them first.

The setting is at System Settings › [your name] › iCloud › Drive › Desktop & Documents Folders.

The iCloud Drive (Archive) folder

If there's a folder called iCloud Drive (Archive) in your home folder, it's the local copy macOS made when iCloud Drive was turned off or you signed out. It isn't synced, so it can be weeks or years out of date, and it takes space for every file in it. Open it, compare it with what's in iCloud Drive now, copy out anything that's only there, and only then move the rest to the Trash. Apple notes that you hold Option while dragging to copy files to or from it.

Other cloud apps

Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and similar apps keep their files in their own folders, which appear in the Finder sidebar. Each app decides what stays downloaded and has its own online-only option, usually by Control-clicking a file or folder in Finder; the name varies by app. The same rule applies as with iCloud: freeing the local copy is safe, deleting removes the file from the cloud. Most of these apps, and iCloud Drive itself, plug into Finder through the same part of macOS, fileproviderd, which is why it can look busy in Activity Monitor while any of them syncs: what fileproviderd is, and how to calm it.

What not to do

• Don't delete files in iCloud Drive to make room on one Mac. They disappear from your iPhone, iPad and other Macs too. Use Remove Download.
• Don't go into ~/Library/Mobile Documents. That's where iCloud Drive's files are kept on disk, and macOS manages it. Work in the iCloud Drive section of Finder instead.
• Don't turn iCloud Drive off as a clean-up step. Your files stay in iCloud, but if you keep a copy you get a separate iCloud Drive (Archive) folder on this Mac, and your files stop syncing with your other devices.

For everything else on your disk, see how to free up space on your Mac, safely. Downloaded iCloud files are also part of why macOS reports some used space as purgeable: what purgeable space is.

How Tend helps

Tend's Files tab has a cloud downloads view that shows how much each iCloud Drive folder, your Desktop and Documents (when they sync to iCloud) and Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox keep on this Mac. The scan is free and removes nothing from the cloud. With Tend Pro, you can choose Remove Download on iCloud items from there; Tend asks iCloud to drop the local copy, so the file stays in iCloud and downloads again when you open it. For other cloud apps, Tend shows the size and leaves the choice to the app, and Space Map won't move iCloud Drive or cloud storage folders to the Trash.

Questions

Related guides

Sources

• Apple, Store files in iCloud Drive on Mac (macOS 27), and the macOS 15 version
• Apple, Work with folders and files in iCloud Drive on Mac
• Apple, Turn off Desktop & Documents Folders on your Mac
• Apple, Optimize storage space on your Mac
• Apple, Change Storage settings on Mac
• Apple, Delete files and folders on Mac (items moved to the Trash from iCloud Drive)
• Apple, Recover deleted files on iCloud.com

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